1. Field
The technology disclosed relates to testing of connected vehicle systems. The connections involved are sometimes referred to as Car-2-Car (C2C), Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V), Car-2-Infrastructure (C2I), or Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I). More generically, the connections are referred to as C2X and V2X. The technology disclosed provides an over the wire simulation of signals that a system will receive in operation, which allows testing of algorithms, breadboards, prototypes and complete systems.
2. Related Art
The ever-growing use of motor vehicles on road networks that have limited capacity which itself can only grow at a much slower rate has increased the need to manage traffic flows, and the impact on traffic flows of vehicular accidents, and to increase the overall efficiency of such networks. One of the initiatives around this goal is the connected vehicle that exchanges data with other vehicles and with infrastructure.
Connected vehicles are equipped with radio communication links which can form ad-hoc communications networks with other similarly-equipped vehicles, automatically exchanging positional and other information that can be used to support traffic management or automatic accident-avoidance and warning schemes, for example. This network can also include roadside infrastructure capable of broadcasting and receiving wide area data and other information as well as more targeted data to individual vehicles or other localized data such as the state of traffic lights. In this network, on-board systems are designed to work co-operatively.
Such a radio network, whilst appearing a simple concept on first inspection, presents significant challenges both technological and logistical. Radio signals are prone to interference and blockage in the types of environments where motor vehicles operate and may have limited range. Integration of complex systems into motor vehicles is difficult unless conducted during manufacture, so it will take some considerable time to create penetration rates where there are enough connected vehicles to enable associated strategies to be effective. There will always be cases where connected vehicles are operating in an environment which includes unconnected vehicles.
In order to develop these systems to the point where they are effective and can be deployed, the traditional approach has been to conduct extensive vehicular experiments, trials and research at test tracks or in some cases on actual road networks. This approach is almost always a compromise. Test tracks offer only limited scope to cover the vast array of situations to be researched. On live road networks, the full range of situations cannot be created without disruption or introduction of safety hazards. Such trials are invariably expensive in terms of provision of physical assets and human resources. Also, prototype transmitters may fall short of the performance expected of deployable units especially in the areas of transmitter power.
To mitigate this, computer simulations may be conducted to create a very wide range of typical scenarios and to assist in the development and verification of algorithms and strategies. However, such simulations almost never include actual radio network and other hardware and associated sensors and represent a further compromise as a result.
It is desirable to provide new modes of testing that are cost effective and that exercise the systems being tested.